


That Time of the Month

by starrylizard



Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Good Dad Jack, Hurt Riley, Hurt/Comfort, It's really just fluff, Menstruation, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Sort Of, jack and riley
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-05
Updated: 2020-12-05
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:09:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27888799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starrylizard/pseuds/starrylizard
Summary: It's that time of the month, Riley thinks it is the worst timing, but Jack is sometimes a surprisingly great dad.
Comments: 12
Kudos: 41





	That Time of the Month

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to Tumblr. This one is for my poor suffering friends - you know who you are, so I won’t call you out. It’s flashfiction, so may hold terrible spelling and grammar, but I hope not. ;)

It was bad timing. Not that there was really ever good timing, but this was particularly bad timing. 

Riley had crawled out of bed this morning and carefully left her cute belly-revealing outfits at home, instead opting to cover a t-shirt with a stylish hoodie. She also went for the slightly roomier low-cut pants.

She groaned quietly figuring Jack’s latest CD, consisting mostly of Salt N Pepa classics, would cover the small sound, even as it was making her headache a little more unbearable. If she could just walk around a bit, she could make things a little better, but there wasn’t a lot of chance for that in the back of a surveillance van.

At least this time it was only Jack here with her. Mac and Bozer were inside the building, trying not to yawn as they lounged about in various parts of the hotel and fed them intel about the areas that Riley hadn’t been able to hack any cameras.

No Mac and no Bozer meant that the van was at least a lot less cramped (haha, no pun intended) and, for the most part, Jack didn’t need to make a lot of small talk with Riley during surveillance ops like this one. He was happy to sing and annoy the crap out of Mac and Bozer via the radio when he thought they weren’t checking in often enough.

Riley stretched and really wished she hadn’t eaten the jerky earlier as a particularly nasty cramp made her wish she could just open up a portal to hell. It would surely be more fun than another however-many hours of this.

Riley suddenly sensed Jack’s concerned eyebrows and, sure enough, there they were in the rear-view mirror. She could see the moment he knew he’d been caught out as he pretended to stretch his shoulders and then reached to turn the volume down.

“Hey Riles?” Jack turned in his seat to look into the back of the van.

_Oh, here we go! I really do not want to have this conversation. Please don’t make this a discussion._ Jack surprised her though, by not asking the questions she’d thought were coming.

“Can you hand me that black bag over there. It’s where I keep my comfy tailbone cushion. You know how my back gets when I sit so long.”

“Sure Jack.” Riley reached for the aforementioned unassuming black bag, passing it up to Jack. She sure wished she had something to soothe her own back as another wave of pain rolled across her abdomen and her back seemed to seize again in sympathy. Her head was already throbbing enough that she was getting nauseous. _How many more hours was thins going to take? Oof._

“Riley?” Jack asked, quietly.

Riley opened her eyes, only then realising she’d closed them for just a moment against the pain. Jack was still clutching his bag and so was she.

“Uh huh,” she sighed, waiting for something very awkward to occur.

“How about you sit up front for a bit. The seats are nice and supportive. I’ll share my kit if you don’t tell Mac and Bozer.” He wiggled the black bag she’d now allowed him to take from her.

“N’aw gotta watch the screen, Jack.” Riley smiled. Jack really was the closest thing she’d ever had to a dad and it was when he was acting this way exactly that she felt it most.

“You can watch it up here. Do your bloopity-bloop thing and link it to your laptop and we can both gander at it. Come on, try it for a moment.” Jack paused and began blowing up his little butt cushion like he was eighty rather than pushing fifty, all the time watching Riley over the top of it with a puppy-like expression that would melt the most heartless soul, and Riley couldn’t help but grin. “And before you say no, you should know what I have to offer. Come on, hon. I promise it’s worth it.”

Riley felt her eyes water a little. Damn Jack and being so sweet, right when she was all hormones.

“Hey now, you okay there, pumpkin?”

She nodded and, not really trusting her voice not to wobble and therefore finding it less than easy to deny Jack what he wanted. She clambered into the front passenger seat with her laptop. Jack, looking happy, rubbed his hands together once she was settled and then made a show of opening the bag. Riley grinned at the showmanship, clearly designed just to make her smile, and settled back into the actually much more comfortable front seat.

“Now, you know old Jack’s back gets all bent out of shape with all the sitting. Mac thinks all I have is my patented Jack cushion . . .” Jack poked said cushion underneath him with a sigh as he spoke. “. . . but I have more than that.” Jack reached into the bag pulling out several single-use warmer packs and offering Riley a couple of them. “You just squeeze them and shake them, and voila! Warmth.” 

“Thanks, Jack!” Riley happily shook the packets along with Jack, making like maracas to the still softly playing music. She then settled one between the chair and her very sore lower back and tucked the other into her hoodie right over her cramping belly, hoping it looked like she was warming her hands.

Jack gave her an assessing sort of look and then made a sound Riley knew meant Jack was feeling good about himself. The next moment, a bottle of Advil landed in her lap and Riley smiled, only slightly surprised now. A packet of plain crackers appeared on the dash and Jack opened them pointing to let her know they were to share.

“You’re welcome, sweetheart.” 

They sat in comfortable companionship, regularly interrupted only by Mac and Bozer’s updates and by Jack’s occasional animated commentary on the various people wandering through the lobby on her laptop screen surveillance. If there was one thing Riley was constantly having to relearn, it was that Jack was full of surprises.

Maybe this wasn’t the worst possible timing after all.


End file.
